Notre Dame Law Review Volume 90 | Issue 4 Article 9 5-2015 Return to Political Theology Joshua D. Hawley University of Missouri School of Law Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.law.nd.edu/ndlr Part of the Law and Philosophy Commons, Natural Law Commons, and the Practical Theology Commons Recommended Citation Joshua D. Hawley, Return to Political Theology, 90 Notre Dame L. Rev. 1631 (2014). Available at: http://scholarship.law.nd.edu/ndlr/vol90/iss4/9 This Essay is brought to you for free and open access by the Notre Dame Law Review at NDLScholarship. It has been accepted for inclusion in Notre Dame Law Review by an authorized administrator of NDLScholarship. For more information, please contact [email protected]. \\jciprod01\productn\N\NDL\90-4\NDL409.txt unknown Seq: 1 11-MAY-15 13:53 ESSAY RETURN TO POLITICAL THEOLOGY Joshua D. Hawley* INTRODUCTION There was a time when theology was called the “queen of the sciences.” From the beginnings of the university in the High Middle Ages through the nineteenth century, theology formed the backbone of liberal instruction at institutions of higher learning. Those days are long past. What remains of theological investigation in most major American universities has been trans- posed into the study of religion and safely sequestered in “religious studies” departments. Few undergraduates today encounter theology as a disci- pline—and as for law students, well, the idea that theology might have some relevance for the study of law is regarded in the legal academy as either quaint or worse, vaguely menacing. And yet. The last two decades have brought surging interest in the field called law and religion; religious liberty has become a subject of major doctri- nal concern; and one of the most important books published by a legal aca- demic in the past four years was a work of political theology.1 These stirrings in the legal world have been matched by a renewed inter- est among theologians in politics and the law. For evidence of that, consider the recent publication of one of the more ambitious studies in biblical theol- ogy of the last three decades, N.T. Wright’s Paul and the Faithfulness of God.2 © 2015 Joshua D. Hawley. Individuals and nonprofit institutions may reproduce and distribute copies of this Essay in any format at or below cost, for educational purposes, so long as each copy identifies the author, provides a citation to the Notre Dame Law Review, and includes this provision in the copyright notice. * Associate Professor, University of Missouri School of Law. Thanks to Sam Hill, Clayton Campbell, Isaac Gelbfish, Trenton Van Oss, and Victor Zapana for excellent and timely research assistance. As ever, my most cherished intellectual partner is my wife, Erin Morrow Hawley, and as ever, her contributions have been invaluable. It’s almost always true that the best pieces are “taught” pieces, and I have had the considerable good fortune to think through many of the themes in this piece with a group of talented undergraduates. This Essay is for them: Ben, Paul, Will, Adam, Kyle, Michael, Jacob, Josh, Zane, Nick, Stanton, Cameron, Austin, and Cole. 1 I am thinking of Paul W. Kahn’s Political Theology.PAUL W. KAHN, POLITICAL THEOL- OGY (2011). 2 4 N.T. WRIGHT, PAUL AND THE FAITHFULNESS OF GOD (2013). 1631 \\jciprod01\productn\N\NDL\90-4\NDL409.txt unknown Seq: 2 11-MAY-15 13:53 1632 notre dame law review [vol. 90:4 Wright is an English theologian of some acclaim. A prolific writer, he counts more than sixty titles to his credit, and his latest is the fourth installment in a series investigating New Testament history and theology. Wright’s work has canvassed such subjects as the “historical Jesus” and first-century Christianity, but he considers himself principally a scholar of the Apostle Paul.3 His most recent volume is a sweeping study of Paul’s theology, including, importantly, Paul’s political theology. Running over fifteen hundred pages in length and divided into two books, Paul and the Faithfulness of God painstakingly recon- structs Paul’s historical context and intellectual influences on the way to a thorough restatement of Paul’s thought. The volume concludes with a mul- tichapter examination of what Pauline theology means for Paul’s day and ours, with politics front and center. The book has proven a minor sensation in the world of biblical studies. But why should lawyers care? The answer has to do with what Mark Lilla has recently and rather famously called “the Great Separation.”4 Lilla’s claim is that liberalism and limited, constitutional government are possible only when religion is firmly quarantined from the business of politics.5 “[I]ndividual rights to private and collective worship, freedom of conscience, religious toleration”—all these were the fruits of banishing religion from the public sphere, he says.6 By his account, modernity itself emerged from this great separation. The idea is hardly novel. It has been in vogue in the western world since at least the Enlightenment. Listen closely in contemporary America and you will hear it just about everywhere, from political theory to Supreme Court opinions citing the “wall” separating church and state.7 It is so common- place, in fact, so thoroughly conventional and widely accepted that it is some- times difficult to imagine any other way of seeing the world. But as critical legal scholars remind us, conventions can be dangerous things. They condition us to accept as facts what are in truth highly norma- tive propositions. And that brings us back to Paul. Pauline theology shares a good deal in common with the liberal tradition. Indeed, it is among that tradition’s most powerful moral sources.8 Yet, Pauline theology challenges as many liberal conventions as it affirms, including, perhaps especially, the Great Separation. This may come as a surprise to those who view Paul as a 3 Commentators refer to Paul variously as St. Paul, Paul the Apostle, Saul of Tarsus, or Saul Paulus (among others). For simplicity’s sake, I will usually call him simply Paul. 4MARK LILLA, THE STILLBORN GOD 58 (2007). 5 Id. at 8. 6 Id. 7 See, e.g., Everson v. Bd. of Educ., 330 U.S. 1, 16 (1947) (“In the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect ‘a wall of separa- tion between church and State.’” (quoting Reynolds v. United States, 98 U.S. 145, 164 (1878))); see also Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602, 612–13 (1971) (noting that the Consti- tution demands a “secular” purpose for all legislation). 8 See HAROLD J. BERMAN, LAW AND REVOLUTION 165–98 (1983) (exploring the “relig- ious dimension” of the “Western legal tradition”); CHARLES TAYLOR, SOURCES OF THE SELF 91–107, 130–42 (1989). \\jciprod01\productn\N\NDL\90-4\NDL409.txt unknown Seq: 3 11-MAY-15 13:53 2015] return to political theology 1633 “religious” writer concerned exclusively with spiritual matters like salvation and judgment, the afterlife, and heaven. But if N.T. Wright’s magisterial reconsideration of Paul demonstrates anything, it demonstrates that this take on Paul is badly mistaken. Wright is adamant—and convincing—that Paul’s teaching was inescapably political.9 For at the heart of Paul’s public message was a political claim, that the God of Israel had become a worldwide king in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.10 As Wright shows, this deeply political gos- pel posed a sharp challenge to the claims of the Roman Empire.11 But it does more. It carries major implications for the shape and conduct of gov- ernment, then and now.12 Pauline theology disputes the central premises of the Great Separation. Not necessarily, however, for reasons one might expect. Paul does not advo- cate rule by priests or the use of political power to compel belief. Pauline theology offers support instead for a form of limited government, the equal dignity and moral worth of every individual, even an open political society. But here is the paradox: The ground for these affirmations is precisely Paul’s announcement of Christ as worldwide sovereign. In Pauline theology, that announcement generates a unique form of political dualism, one in which the state and the sacred are divided, not along the familiar axis of “religion” and “politics,” but rather according to what is for Paul the truly all-important distinction: between present and future.13 What Pauline theology disputes is the Great Separation’s claim that humane government is possible only when religion is roped off from the public realm. To challenge that assertion, of course, is to challenge much of modern liberalism. And there is no question that Paul’s principal political claim—that Jesus Christ is sovereign—cannot be accepted by liberal theory, or not in that form, anyway. But therein lies Pauline theology’s political rele- vance and appeal. Standing at once at the origins of the liberal tradition yet outside that tradition’s main channel, Pauline theology is uniquely posi- tioned to offer a critical perspective on modern liberalism’s conventional claims, the Great Separation first among them. To be specific: The contrast with Pauline political theology exposes the fact that the Great Separation is premised not on mutual toleration or relig- ious liberty, but on a particular vision of sovereignty.14 The Great Separation locates sovereignty’s source in the autonomy of the human person, and it identifies sovereignty’s home as the state. On the essentially Hobbesian view at the base of the Great Separation and much of modern political theory, the state is the ultimate and perhaps the only authentic human community 9WRIGHT, supra note 2, at 1271–77.